If you look at schools, there are many grandparents who take their grandchildren to school and pick them up, who are with them in the afternoon and even stay with their grandchildren for whole days and nights. Either because their parents work or because they just need a “break” from being parents.

But first of all, no parent should need a “break” from being a parent, it’s their responsibility and no one else’s! In fact, when a person becomes a father or a mother, taking care of his children is his greatest responsibility in life.

A grandmother wants to collect money for taking care of her grandson

A controversy has started in New Zealand and may spread to the rest of the world. It has never been considered that grandparents charge for taking care of their grandchildren, but why not? In fact, in this place mentioned, a grandmother has shared this concern on her social networks ( Reddit ).

In addition, what she says is that she asked her daughter for money to take care of her grandchildren and asks Internet users if she was wrong to ask for it, although she believes she did the right thing because she is giving up her free time and the logical thing is to charge a fee for that in this way, you can at least get something useful out of it.

Taking care of her grandchildren because she wants to spend quality time with them, she obviously doesn’t mind. But when her daughter forces her to take care of her grandchildren because she has to meet her work needs, why does she have to give up her free time because of her daughter’s demands for childcare? her grandson? She has logic, right?

In the social network, he exposes it as follows (it is translated):

“My daughter is 29 years old and has a one-year-old son. She will soon go back to work. She works 5 days a week, 7 or 8 hours a day from 7:30 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon. She asked me if during that time that she had to work I would be willing to take care of her son, at least two or three days a week.

Of course I am willing to spend time with my grandson, but I explained that I would like to be paid $12 an hour. She understood my need for the money, but she told me that she would only pay me 10 dollars an hour because she charges only 22 euros an hour.

I am not a daycare, I have my life, my job and she must understand that I would be giving up my time when I work from home. I’m going to give up my time. For this reason, I need the money to replace that time I am giving up.

As I work from home I can’t do it at the same time as taking care of his son. She tells me that it’s only 2 or 3 days during the week, which is when her husband’s parents can’t take care of her. She would provide the food. I love my grandson, but I’m not a daycare.”

Is it an obligation of grandparents to take care of their grandchildren?

The answer is clear: NO. It is not their obligation at all and if they do it they must do it because they really want to and not because they feel bad for their own children or because they feel they are at a crossroads and therefore they must take care of them. Not much less.

The story mentioned above, as expected, has aroused many reactions among netizens. There are those who thought that the grandmother had no empathy for her daughter and that she should simply tell her no instead of asking her for money.

On the other hand, there are also Internet users who wonder if they should do the same and pay their parents to take care of their children… Or if it is better to spend that money on professional caregivers and leave grandparents “free” since they have already had their stage of caring for their children, and they do not have to have the obligation to care for their grandchildren in old age.

There are also users who argued that the grandmother had every right in the world to demand money for the free time she wasted taking care of her grandson at a set time and as an imposition on her life.

Grandparents love being with their grandchildren, and that’s true! But what cannot happen is that they feel that caring for the little ones is an imposition or an obligation and that the situation overwhelms them. Grandparents are not “slaves” and should never be.

It’s okay for them to collaborate, but as long as they want to. They should be responsible for their time, knowing what to do in their day, enjoying life… without feeling bad if they don’t want to or can’t take care of their grandchildren from 8 to 3!